Such are, for instance, the neighbourhoods of Penzance, in Cornwall; those of St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire; Scotter, in Lincolnshire, where the agricultural depression—we are told by Mr. Rider Haggard—was not so badly felt as elsewhere on account of market-gardening; Benington, in the same county, where the soil is a rich loam with silty subsoil, and where all sorts of vegetables, potatoes, and flower-bulbs are grown on a large scale, together with wheat.[123] Orpington is a well-known centre for market-gardening, as well as for fruit-growing, and in this district culture under glass has also taken lately some extension.
There are many other interesting centres of market-gardening, especially in the neighbourhoods of all large cities, but I will mention only one more—namely, Potton, in Huntingdonshire. It is—we are told by Mr. Haggard—“a stronghold of small cultivators who grow vegetables upon holdings of land varying in size from one up to twenty acres, or even more.” It has thus become an important centre for market-gardening, “120 trucks of produce leaving Potton daily during the season for London, in addition to fifty trucks which pass over the Great Northern line from Sandy station, together with much more from sidings and other stations.” This is the more interesting as within a short distance from this animated centre “thousands of acres are quite or very nearly derelict, and the farmhouses, buildings, and cottages are slowly rotting down.” The worst is that “all this land was cultivated, and grew crops up to the ’eighties.”[124]
Another oasis of market-gardening is offered by the county of Bedfordshire. “Being a county of natural small-holdings, carved out before the passing of the 1907 Act,” it is rapidly becoming—we are told by Mr. F. E. Green—“a county of market-gardens.” The fertility of its soil, the fact that it can easily be worked at any time of the year, and that a race of skilled gardeners has developed there long since, have contributed to that growth; but, of course, the whole is hampered by the heavy rents, which have grown up to £4 an acre for the sites near the station, where manure is received in large quantities from London.[125] Happily enough, the Bedfordshire County Council has been eager to acquire land for small holdings, and, after having spent £40,000 in the acquisition of land, they have, up to 30th June, 1911, provided one-third of the applicants with 2,759 acres—the total demand, by a thousand applicants, having already attained 12,350 acres.
And yet all this progress still appears insignificant by the side of the demand for vegetables which grows every year (and necessarily must grow, as is seen by comparing the low consumption of vegetables in this country with the consumption of home-grown vegetables in Belgium, indicated by Mr. Rowntree in his Lessons from Belgium). The result is a steadily increasing importation of vegetables to this country, which has attained now more than £8,000,000.[126]
A branch of horticulture which has increased enormously since the first edition of this book was published, is the growing of fruit and vegetables in greenhouses, in the same way as it is done in the Channel Islands. All round London—we are told by Mr. John Weathers in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica—the hothouse culture has taken a great development, and, in fact, along the railways which radiate from London in all directions the glass-houses have already become a familiar feature of the landscape. Immense quantities of grapes, tomatoes, figs, and of all sorts of early vegetables are grown at Worthing, where eighty-two acres are covered now with glass-houses, as also in the parish of Cheshunt, in Herts, where the area under hothouses is already 130 acres; while a careful estimate put in 1908 the area of individual hothouses in England at about 1,200 acres (Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. xi., p. 266). The elements of this culture having been developed by the experience of the Channel Islands growers, and by the wide extension which hothouses for the growing of flowers had taken long since in this country, it may be concluded from the various evidence we have at hand that on the whole this sort of culture is finding its reward, and is now firmly established.
The same, however, cannot yet be said of the culture maraîchère of the French market-gardeners which is being introduced now into this country. Many attempts have been made in this direction in different parts of the country with varied degrees of success; but little or nothing is known about the results. An attempt on a large scale was made, as is known, by some Evesham gardeners. Having read about this sort of culture in France, and the wonderful results obtained by it, some of the Evesham gardeners went to Paris with the intention of learning that culture from the Paris maraîchers. Finding that impossible, they invited a French gardener to Evesham, gave him three-quarters of an acre, and, after he had brought from his Paris marais his glass-bells, frames and lights, and, above all, his knowledge, he began gardening under the eyes of his Evesham colleagues. “Happily enough,” he said to an interviewer, “I do not speak English; otherwise I should have had to talk all the time and give explanations, instead of working. So I show them my black trousers, and tell them in signs: ‘Begin by making the soil as black as these trousers, then everything will be all right.’” Of course, to be profitable, immense quantities of stable manure are required, as also immense numbers of glass-bells and glass-frames, which represent a very costly outlay, and plenty of watering, to say nothing of the powers of observation required for developing a new branch of gardening in new surroundings.
What were the results obtained at Evesham it is difficult to say, the more so as the money results which, according to some papers, were obtained the first year (brutto income of £750 from three-quarters of an acre) seem to have been exaggerated for a first-year crop, and thus awakened scepticism with regard to that sort of culture altogether.
Another experiment in the same direction was made on the estate of Mayland, in Essex, which was bought by Mr. Joseph Fels in order to promote small farming in England. It must be said that, apart from the cold, damp climate of this part of England, the heavy clay of Essex represents the least appropriate soil for spade culture. In England, as everywhere, this sort of culture has always been developing in preference on a light loam, or in such places, like Jersey, where a meagre granitic soil could easily be manured—in this special case by sea-weeds.
Nevertheless, the aim of Mr. Fels having been chiefly educational, this aim has certainly been achieved, as we have now, in three different works of Mr. Thomas Smith, the manager of the farm, practical manuals teaching the would-be gardener the essentials of “French Gardening.”[127]
A French maraîcher having been invited for this purpose, and 2,500 glass-bells, 1,000 lights for frames, a windmill pump, etc., having been bought at a considerable cost, the work of the French gardener on two acres of land was carefully followed by the manager of the farm, Mr. T. Smith, day by day, to be afterwards described and illustrated by photographs for the use of those who would like to try their hand at the same work.